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From: ali@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: AmigaWorld Ray-Tracing Article
Message-ID: <263@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 23-Apr-87 02:35:36 EST
Article-I.D.: rocky.263
Posted: Thu Apr 23 02:35:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Apr-87 01:08:35 EST
References: <1514@sphinx.uchicago.edu>
Reply-To: ali@rocky.UUCP (Ali Ozer)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 22

In article <1514@sphinx.uchicago.edu> Dave Griffith writes:
>I do not currently own an Amiga (although my next student loan may go towards
>a 500 if it turns out to be as good as the propaganda says it is)
Rumor has it mail order places will have the Amiga 500 for LESS THAN $500
when it FIRST comes out. So go for it!

>     In short, what we have so nicely listed in the article is 
>some really slow and sloppily conceived code.  
Another Ray Tracer for the Amiga is available as Shareware from Dave Wecker
(who also wrote a very popular public domain VT100 Emulator/Kermit program
for the Amiga). This program apparently uses "heuristics" to reduce the 
computation time on the Amiga to that of on a Vax 780 --- Not bad!
After the program is done, it tells you how many pixels were computed
and how many were guessed... Dave's program also comes in two parts: 
The first part calculates 12 bit absolute colors and the second part
generates Amiga standard IFF files in one of various formats and also
allows you to merge different images. Dave also plans to create a 
ray-traced animation generator (to generate Juggler-type animation sequences).
It'll be interesting to see how it compares to Eric Graham's program...
(Ie, how long it takes to generate images of similar quality.)

Ali Ozer, ali@rocky.stanford.edu